RA Poll: Top 100 DJs of 2008

RA turns to its readers to see who they decided were the best DJs in the world in 2008.

DJing: It's an artform like few others, and one that too often goes underrecognized. DJs can transform a good party into a great one, and turn a previously solid night into a disaster. Sometimes they've even been rumoured to save lives.

But while RA has contributors from around the world that have picked our site's top jocks in the past, we decided to try something a bit different this year. We opened our top DJs poll to you—the RA users—to see who you felt was consistently rocking dance floors in 2008. So we set up a page, locked out all of the fake e-mail spamming street teamers and let you at it.

The results were overwhelming, with thousands of votes pouring in for DJs of nearly every conceivable genre. House, techno, trance, dubstep, electro, disco, indie and more: It's a list that has Tiesto rubbing shoulders with Mathias Kaden, Boys Noize with Theo Parrish and Damian Lazarus sandwiched right between Aeroplane and Armin Van Buuren. Ladies and gentlemen, your Top 100 DJs of 2008.

He might have one of the best poker faces in dance music while he's playing, but Carl Craig sure seems to excite those he plays for. Chalk that up to a recent move to Traktor, which has seen his mixing become tighter than ever before, and—of course—his stash of unreleased edits of his own material that always seem to nudge his sets to an even higher level.

Forgive Matt Edwards for charting what seems like only his label's releases. He can't help that so few other imprints specialize in the unique brand of pulsing techno that has mesmerized dance floors around the world. A true minimalist, Edwards is one of the few DJs nowadays that believes in the power of the sensuously lengthy mix, exploiting the power of dance music's hypnotic potential to its fullest.

If you go to see Adam Beyer, you know exactly what you're going to get: Unremitting techno, all night long. The beauty of Beyer, though? Despite the consistent BPM range and sound palette, he somehow makes the tracks that he plays sound shiny and new, as though it was the first time you'd ever heard a 4/4 beat. You may have heard a kick drum before, but you haven't heard one quite the way that Beyer can transform it.

Loco Dice's hip-hop background is crucial to his appeal behind the decks. Unlike many of his fellow DJs, you can feel his personality push through in the percussive rhythms that he likes so much. Crow all you want about Dice being only as good as his production partner Martin Buttrich in the studio, those who have seen him DJ in person know that only Dice could produce music with such panache.

Is Phillip Sollmann a deep house DJ trapped in a minimal techno DJ's body? Maybe so, but once you get over the initial shock of this melancholic producer playing such physical cuts, you've given into the jacking impulse enough to realize that Efdemin's productions and his favorite tracks to spin are both deeply emotional. One's just a bit better for partying—something that Sollmann knows well.

Reports were most definitely mixed about James Holden as a DJ just five short years ago. But where the Border Community head's unique track selection seemed to lead to sets pockmarked by unsteady mixing and awkward dance floor moments, nowadays Holden is comfortable and assured behind the decks, delivering smoothly flowing performances that make his entertaining genre-mashing sound effortless.

Matthew Dear may not be the most technically adept DJ nor the deepest digger. Nope, Dear's talent lies in that indefinable region known as charisma. He imbues his sets with the swagger that he brings to the stage as the frontman for his Big Hands project and takes the crowd along for the ride. In an era when so many jocks sound the same, that's a rare treat indeed.

Danny Howells may want to get back to his nursing career, but it's doubtful that dance fans will allow him to do so in peace. 2008 was yet another banner year for Howells, whether it be in his continued side career as an '80s DJ or proving that longer sets are indeed better by moving through genres like a hip-hop DJ might—as quickly and as smoothly as humanly possible.

How do you quash criticism that you've made yet another cash-grab by going to the genre du jour after years in the commercial dance scene? Hard work. And that's exactly what Ali Shirazinia excels in, taking his stunning string of productions to the masses for sets that are punishing exercises in the power of true power of minimal techno. Not bad for a man who once helped produce a song called "Sexy Dance," eh?

Ask any techno fan about Berlin's Berghain, and the first DJ that springs to their lips will be Marcel Dettmann. His streamlined, muscular style of techno embodies the spirit of the echoing, industrial space: music that you can surrender yourself to, losing all sense of time and place. As anyone who has witnessed one of his thunderous sets will attest, Dettmann is a modern master of rhythmic escapism.

Lee Burridge actually looks like he's having fun when he's DJing. And while that shouldn't be a rare thing, as anyone who has been raving can tell you, it most definitely is. That enthusiasm rubs off on nearly everyone who ventures through the door at a Burridge gig, but most especially at his celebrated Get Weird parties where anything goes—six-foot lobsters included. As his beloved recent RA podcast proves, whether it be in mixing upbeat tech house or moody, slow groovers, Burridge has graduated from being one of the NuBreed to become one of the top DJs in the world.

Whether she's doing one of her loopy minimal techno sets or playing with Traktor, Magda has an undeniable connection with the crowd. We're not sure exactly what she did during her ten weeks of silence, but judging by the DJ sets she dropped over the past 12 months, we tend to think it was time well-spent. With gigs as far afield as Peru, Japan and the Dominican Republic, along with Minus label head Richie Hawtin, she continued to spread the gospel of minimal techno to the world—even despite a stolen laptop—as well as offering up a surprising variety of sounds that hinted at interesting avenues that she may well explore in 2009.

Steffen Berkhahn, or Dixon as you most probably know him, has come a long way since helping found the Innervisions imprint in 2005. Sure, he's been DJing for over 15 years now, but the worldwide success of the label has brought him legions of new fans that have cottoned on to his smooth deep house grooves. His access to a raft of unreleased Innervisions material certainly helps his cause—his DJ gigs are one of the only places that you'll get to hear Henrik Schwarz's sublime reworks of Omar and Bill Withers.

There's a joke that goes around certain circles that no matter what release is sent out to DJs and journalists, Laurent Garnier's name is there in lights, claiming "full support!" If you listen to a Garnier set, though, you'll soon begin to believe it. The French jock spans genres just about as well as anyone DJ alive, making treks from the outer reaches of deep house to dubstep to drum & bass and back again in fewer steps than you can imagine. Garnier's range is broad, and it's this open-eared approach that has kept him relevant over the course of his 20+ year career behind the decks.

What was Sven Väth doing championing Johnny D, Pigon and SIS in 2008? Staying improbably and impressively relevant, that's what. Aside from hosting one of the most successful parties on Ibiza and continuing to curate a forward-thinking lineup at his Frankfurt club, Väth continued in 2008 to do what he does best: Namely, bringing underground sounds to the masses in an entertaining and convincing way. That Väth is well over 40 and still remains dedicated to blowing up the newest trends is good news for any up-and-coming producer who still wants to make it in the music biz. Respect, as they say, is due.

2008's Invol2ver saw Sasha remixing some of his favorite recent tunes into a continuous mix. It's an idealized version of his vaunted DJ sets, which see him doing the same on the fly in the darkness of the club. In that context, Sasha hits upon another ideal: Even when he plays the same tunes, no set is alike. And just about anything can happen. For a DJ of such repute to be willing to play without a net at this stage in his career is admirable. For him to do it so well? That makes him one of the top DJs of 2008.

A good DJ plays records, a great DJ makes those records sound like an extension of the DJ playing them. John Digweed is a great DJ—a performer that has managed to stay relevant despite the progressive house backlash by smoothly moving into the world of minimal and picking out the records that he could match with his own sound—and the progressive house that he still champions. It's no mean feat: Plenty of lesser jocks have fallen by the wayside when their genre of choice falls out of favour. It's to Digweed's credit that he hasn't—and he sounds all the better for it.

Many have complained that Luciano plays the same records over and over in his DJ sets. The thing that those people seem to forget? They're damn good records. Sure, Luciano may not have reached too far into his box in 2008, but it's a set that has resonated with many. And why not? Luciano effortlessly takes in the floppy funk of his Cadenza label, the softcore romanticism of M83 and the chattering naturalism of sampled folk singers from around the world. In a genre where cold, mechanical mixing is often valued above all else, Luciano's DJing feels defiantly alive and wondrously human.

Say what you will about Richie Hawtin, but remember this much: There are few other DJs in the world with the cojones to even attempt to push things forward in the manner that the Minus head has done, let alone ones that have been in the game for as long as he has. The fact that debate rages about whether what Hawtin does is DJing at all anymore is a testament to his immense (musical and marketing) skill, and it also ensures that he will continue to be relevant for years to come.

In an age where we can find out the name of our favorite DJ's pet parakeet, Ricardo Villalobos is a rare breed: A superstar DJ that we still know precious little about. Sure, tiny bits of information leak out every time that he grants a rare interview, but it's been a long time since we've had someone so famous remain such a mystery. Perhaps that's one reason that we love him: Forced to focus on the wondrous music he selects (and makes), we inevitably cast him in the role we want him to play. Floor filler? Undoubtedly. At his late 2008 gig at Fabric, you could barely step into the main room at 7 AM. Futurist? There's no other DJ making massive crowds dance to such defiantly strange house music. Romantic? Of course! Who else would play heartbreaking folk songs from Chile in the middle of his sets? The best DJ in the world in 2008? Yep, that too.